In her final months Princess Diana was being shat upon by the tabloids -- basically for sleeping with … - Martin Amis

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Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi. . . and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing. . . and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.

Martin Amis

In her final months Princess Diana was being shat upon by the tabloids -- basically for sleeping with an Arab. When she died, these same papers were astonished by the millennial wave of emotionalism that swept the country. . . One paper had a print-ready story about what a slag the Princess was, and they had to pull it at the last moment. It was replaced with an image of Diana as an angel, ascending to heaven.

Arab, Ascending, Astonished, Country, Princess, Sleep

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Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

Change, Cruelty, Fixed, Style, Styles

You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?

Heart, Know, Meet, Shared, Soul, Two

People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.

Chaotic, Gibber, Giving, Jobs, People, Playback

Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that. . . Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.

Devourers, Dream, Gaunt, Night, Sleep, Weep

I think it's likely that the civilizing effect of literature has done most of the work, and still continues to do. Look at Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It proves beyond any shadow of doubt that violence has declined dramatically throughout the centuries. There are various reasons for it: the rise of the state, Leviathan, the monopoly of violence, children's rights, animal rights. They're all positive signs.

Angel, Animal, Book, Dramatically, Likely, Shadow